of blood and clay
by curdled-milk
Summary: Narkikkagura. Neither Naraku nor Kikyo really understand love. they do, however understand the darker passions: lust. hatred. envy. greed. and most of all: obsession.
1. desire

~~~disclaimer. I don't own Inuyasha. Rating is for language, nonconsensual sex etc. I don't personally feel it merits an "R," but it never hurts to be on the safe side, no? third disclaimer -- I've never seen the show, only read the manga in translation. I guess this fic would take place sometime after the current chapter : 311? Yeah. That's plausible, I think.~~~  
  
Naraku howled in frustration as his body spasmed and writhed against the pit that contained him. Yes, it was that time of the month again. Another month, another unsuccessful attempt to tear out the last shred of Onigumo's heart from his being. His diverse components flowed and seethed with malignant force as he concentrated, bringing together a piece of this demon, a snippet of this one-- yes-- maybe that combination would do it. With an echoing scream of agony, Naraku's newest detachment spewed forth from the primordial ooze that was the hanyou's true form.  
  
"Shit." One of Naraku's many throats uttered succinctly. They/ he/ it could feel a tiny fraction of tenderness lurking somewhere within their body. Once more he'd failed to completely rid himself of that thrice cursed human heart. A gooey miasmic tentacle reached up to snare the still screaming monstrosity that he had so recently birthed, and with a few powerful wrenches, pulled it apart, to be rapidly reabsorbed into Naraku's main body. No sense wasting raw materials, after all.  
  
Goddamn that Priestess bitch! Naraku snarled silently. How often had he tried to eliminate the meddlesome corpse, only to have Onigumo's worthless Human heart interfere? The bitch was an impediment to his goals, and worse. .. . she was one of the few who possessed the capability to actually hurt him.  
  
"I will have her dead!" the words violently ripped from half a dozen of Naraku's throats.  
  
(I will have her) Echoed silently deep within.  
  
"I will shred her flesh to bits!"  
  
(and make love to her bones. . .)  
  
Naraku chuckled silently at the last reverberations of Onigumo's sentiments.  
  
"Now that, I can live with."  
  
It was strange really, though Onigumo refused to let Naraku send the undead priestess back to the death she so rightfully deserved, the emotion he felt for Kikyo couldn't really be called love. It was far too twisted a passion for that. Obsession, lust, and hatred all warred within that corrupted shell. And over all, presided the near-overpowering need to posses her, to control her. For her, he would assemble the Shikon no tama, and use its dark powers to complete the corruption of her once-pure soul. Only for her.  
  
All for her.  
  
Naraku snarled silently at Onigumo's dark dreams, as dawn approached, and his protoplasmic form finally began to coalesce and condense once more into his favored humanoid shape.  
  
"Well, that was a waste." He remarked to no one in particular, as he stood wearily, at the bottom of his melting pit. Once more he'd failed to produce a viable detachment to carry on his work. What was that now? Three months, maybe four, since he'd managed to birth any functional offspring? It was all Onigumo's fault! Fucking weak human half! If he could just get his mind off that pathetic excuse for a female, for once, then maybe, just maybe he could get some work done. It's not as if it was an easy task, trying to corrupt the world, and all. You'd think Onigumo'd understand that, and let him concentrate in peace.. .. But oh no. . . That last little shred of soul was always yammering on, about Kikyo this, or and Kikyo that." Gods it made him sick!  
  
Yeah, Naraku was in quite the pissy mood as he stormed out of his dungeon. If he couldn't make a worthwhile replacement, he was just going to have to rely on that untrustworthy Kagura again.  
  
Naraku's eyes narrowed as he considered his eldest and most independent child. She'd returned two days ago, with defiance in her eyes, and a sneer on her lips, despite the fact, that she was bleeding from numerous wounds, and could hardly walk. Plainly, while she was supposed to be out policing his domain, shed been off sucking up to more powerful demons again -- and by the look of it, as usual, failing to win their support. . Would the bitch never learn her place? Well, she was in the dungeon for disciplining now. .  
  
Naraku licked his lips. Discipline. That was something he never tired of -- the sweet sounds of his offspring's screams of agony, the intoxicating scent of her blood -- his blood really, dripping down his fingers. . . the impotent look of hatred and fear in Kagura's eyes. . Ahhh. . Naraku paused in mid-stride, and headed back towards the deeper parts of the castle. Sleep could wait. Now, yes now, was time for pleasure.  
  
-----  
  
Kagura hung wearily from too-familiar manacles. This particular dungeon was in danger of becoming monotonously familiar. The damp cold of the stone walls had long since numbed her spine, and even the painful dig of the heavy irons on her wrists and ankles had ceased to bother her. Sure, it hurt like hell. But this kind of pain was nothing to what she fully expected to receive at Naraku's "loving" hands, and so she forced the constant sting of bloody skin, and ache of bruised muscles back to the bottom of her consciousness, while she focused on her one goal, and only obsession: freedom.  
  
Admittedly, she could just have torn these chains off the wall, and fled from the castle. She was sure she was strong enough for that. There was no way these crumbling walls could withstand the force exerted by an angry demon-- or angry half-demon for that matter. But that would have been a mere short term victory. Short term, like useful for maybe the next five minutes or so, maximum. No. She needed to get her heart back. That was all that mattered. If she only had her own heart, in her body where it belonged, then she'd gladly kill Naraku herself. So what if she was once part of him? The asshole deserved to die as excruciating a death as she could devise. . . . But first, she needed her heart. .. Kagura had no idea how to obtain it, so she had no choice but to hang here and await Naraku's pleasure.  
  
She didn't have to wait much longer.  
  
-----  
  
Naraku strode into the dungeon with a jaunty stride.  
  
"Ah. . Kagura. . " He purred maliciously, "And how are we doing today? Still hanging in there I see?" Yes, even this most evil of hanyous had been known to stoop to low punning at times.  
  
Kagura fixed him with a glare so heated it would have vaporized a lesser being into ashes and component water molecules.  
  
Naraku just laughed, and with a flick of his wrist produced an all-too familiar object from . . . somewhere.  
  
"Now don't be like that, my dear." Naraku admonished, casually flipping the pulsating heart into the air and catching it one handed, "Is that any way to greet your Master?" The last comment was punctuated with a brief squeeze of the disembodied organ in his grasp.  
  
Though her body spasmed in agony at the sudden constricting pressure in her chest, Kagura refused to give Naraku the satisfaction of her screams. She had no choice but to obey his commands in other matters, but in this, she would not yield.  
  
"Really, now." Naraku eyed his recalcitrant detachment with the beginnings of true irritation. "You're becoming as silent as Kanna. I think we're just going to have to do something about that. Hmm?" He lifted one eyebrow questioningly, not that he really expected a reply, and while his suddenly hard eyes locked on Kagura's, he brought her heart to his lips and licked slowly up its quivering surface. Kagura's entire body shivered with chills at the sensation, and at the foreknowledge of what always came next. . . Naraku let himself bite down on one ventricle-- not quite enough to break the heart's muscle, but quite enough that Kagura spasmed in pain, her manacled body thrashing even more painfully against the unyielding wall. He bit harder, this time drawing blood, enjoying the utter agony warring with the hatred in her eyes. He watched as a trickle of blood leaked from Kagura's lips from where she'd bitten herself to prevent any screams from escaping.  
  
Naraku could feel himself heating up. The power he had over this pitiful creature before him was almost as intoxicating as the scent of her blood in his nostrils. He regarded the blood on Kagura's heart, the blood dribbling down her chin. He wanted to hear her scream. Wanted to hear her pant her submission, and her fear. Of Him. He squeezed the heart longer, harder; his eyes growing bright as Kagura's involuntary spasms inflicted new damage on her already wounded body. She gasped in agony. But still, she would not scream.  
  
Naraku stepped closer to his disobedient offspring, "Why will you not scream for me, my lovely? When you have such a beautiful voice?" His hand reached out to stroke her cheek, as she glared venomously back at him. The caressing hand slipped lower to trace the line of her jaw, the curve of her neck. . . he could feel her shivering at his touch, the involuntary tensing of muscles giving away her fear, even if she allowed no expression but hate to cross her face.  
  
Kagura watched in despair, as Naraku vanished her heart back to wherever it was he usually hid it.. . . What came next was usually the worst part of her punishments. But she would be strong. She had a role model now-- one who undoubtedly would have been displeased by the comparison-- but nevertheless it was true, Kagura was teaching herself to be as imperturbable, as calm, as strong, as the great Sesshoumaru-sama. And so Kagura once more refused to scream as Naraku's deceptively gentle caress slid down inside her kimono, while his other hand undid the ties that held it shut.  
  
Kagura tensed, as her clothing slid open. For now, Naraku's caress grew suddenly violent, as his nails raked the sensitive flesh of her breast and ribs, drawing blood. She could do nothing to stop the violation, chained as she was, to the wall. If Naraku got close enough, she'd bite him, though she knew from experience, that'd only bring her more pain. All she could do was strain against her chains and plot revenge, while trying to ignore the violations Naraku perpetrated upon her.  
  
But it was really damned hard to ignore the pain as he indulged his baser desires; nipping at her nipples until he drew blood; licking the blood up like mother's milk. She could feel him pressing against her, his arousal growing and strengthening as he bit and scratched and licked, until at last he undid his trousers and buried himself inside her unwilling, unready body. And this time, Kagura couldn't prevent the whimper that fell from her lips.  
  
Naraku heard the whimper and grinned, slamming his offspring harder against the wall. He loved the sound of her pain, the way her body trembled in fear and hatred. His lips were sticky with her blood, his fingers too. She was tight and hot around him, and he knew that each thrust brought her more pain. Oh gods, if only this were Kikyo! How he'd love to have that one spread-eagled beneath him; her purity clouded by his seed inside her; her virginity torn from her as painfully as he could devise; her icy perfection marred by his teeth, his claws. Naraku's breath came harder and faster; panting as he neared his climax-- buried in his detachment, dreaming of the undead.  
  
Kagura bit back a sigh of relief as she felt Naraku's release. Well, thank the gods that was over. He was always in a good mood after he raped her. Not that he'd consider it rape, of course. After all, technically speaking, she was merely a part of him. Kagura cared little for semantics; she knew what it felt like, and as Naraku pulled his pants back on, she let herself fantasize revenge once more. A revenge that involved cutting off his penis one millimeter at a time and feeding it to him.  
  
"You go back on patrol tomorrow." Naraku's commanding voice cut through her reverie like a knife through butter. "Don't try getting any clever ideas this time. You haven't the brain for it. Remember, bitch, just who you belong to."  
  
As if she could ever forget it. Kagura merely nodded.  
  
Naraku eyed her suspiciously, then shrugged. It didn't matter what she planned, she couldn't do shit to hurt him. Not when he had her heart. And she knew it. "Kanna will let you out in a bit. Don't disappoint me again."  
  
Again Kagura nodded stoically, only allowing her true misery to show after he'd left the dungeon, locking the door behind him. Then, and only then, could she let her whole body go limp, ignoring the agony of the manacles that supported her weight, as she shuddered and sobbed, letting the tears that dripped from her cheeks onto her naked chest leave little tracks in the slowly drying blood that adorned her skin.  
  
As long as she lived, there was hope for freedom. But sometimes, she really did wish she could die.  
  
To be continued.  
  
~~~A/N:: hey there folks! I started this here fic as a break from my usual genre. Needed to get some hardcore angst out before my HYD fics got any more fucked up then they already are. So let me know if this story is worth continuing? 'cause fiik. Reviews Reviews. And yes. I adore flames! So feel free to mock to your heart's content, and I will sit here laughing. ~~~ 


	2. encounter

Replies to reviewers-- no,not by name, just in general. . .  
  
1: yes, it's supposed to be Naraku-- kikyo -- Kagura  
  
2: the ambiguity in the summary was deliberate. I hadn't yet decided if kagome was going to be in the story or not.  
  
3: rating? I started watching R rated movies when I was five. .Since then, I've never understood why anyone of any age shouldn't read/watch whatever they want to. Life is full of bad shit. As long as you aren't imitating it in real life/ getting off on it, then I'm not seeing the problem. Eh, I had way too liberal of an upbringing, I suppose.  
  
4: alternate pairings rock. I'm not capable of writing canon-pairings. I'm thinking inu/kagome aren't even going to appear in this fic. They're just so freaking bland.  
  
5: Err no, I'm not a gOth, in fact, that's the first time I've ever been accused of subscribing to that particular pretension. One fic involving nasty people, does not make an obsession. On the other hand, in my line of work, you kind of have to have an appreciation for blood. I mean, it really is just the coolest substance, and soo tasty too. ..  
  
6: sorry for the long delay between updates. I have this terrible tendency to start writing new fics without an actual plot in mind. And I'm just not inspired for this level of angst. So this chapter is brought to you by stream of conscious typing, since I hate letting fics sit still. Let's see where that gets us.  
  
-----------  
  
Of blood and clay ch 2.  
  
---  
  
Kagura perched watchfully on her giant feather. She was on patrol duty, surveying the borders of Naraku's territory for any signs of hostile infringement. She felt totally redundant. She was convinced that Naraku's potent miasma actually had sensory powers and would signal any encroachment by dangerous youkai or those damned shard hunters well before she could. But her opinions on the matter were, of course, irrelevant. Naraku had commanded her to sentry duty, and so her duty she would perform. What other choice had she? That didn't mean that she had to put a great deal of effort into it, and so, as her feather drifted on the cross-currents of the wind, Kagura obeyed Naraku's orders to the letter. No more, and no less. He'd said to patrol the precise border for his enemies, and she did just that, surveying in a neat five kilometer radius from his current castle; exactly the radius at which his miasma seemed to thin out and dissipate into the healthier air of the surrounding country.  
  
"Honestly!" Kagura snorted to herself. What kind of idiot Youkai or human would want to venture closer anyway? Miasma was not notably good for one's health, and even the less intelligent wildlife had begun a steady exodus from the surrounding forest. No longer did birds sing in the trees, or squirrels scamper in the branches. No, the land was strangely silent, and even the hardiest shrubs and grasses seemed to wilt beneath the evil atmosphere.  
  
Completing her circuit, Kagura was completely unsurprised to be able to report that here was no hostile activity within the range of her keen eyesight, her sense of smell, or her wind-assisted hearing. However, now that her official duties were complete, she could take the time to do her own reconnaissance. She always did this; the small act of defiance one of the few acts she could get away with. Sighing at recently remembered punishments, Kagura allowed her feather to drift farther away from the stronghold. Now, well outside the protective miasma, Kagura was more truly free to search for Naraku's enemies -- her own allies if only they'd accept her. Not that they ever would, but a girl had to hope for something, didn't she? Life without hope was Nothing, and Kagura clung to her few shreds of hope with every fiber of her being.  
  
Kagura's head jerked sharply around, as a sudden shift in the wind brought with it a familiar scent.  
  
"Shit." The only one of Naraku's enemies she hated more than Naraku, himself. Kagura brought her feather around, racing against the wind, as she stooped like some malevolent bird of prey, to land in a small clearing face to face with the one she hated.  
  
Kikyo rested against a tree, looking for all the world like a porcelain statue. Her serenely beautiful features showed no trace of emotion, except, of course, for her eyes. Those twin spheres glowed with a cold fury, the hatred of a corrupted soul, ripped from its well-deserved rest. Those eyes could pierce right through one more sharply than her enchanted arrows. Not that Kagura cared for any of that, as she stalked closer to the undead priestess.  
  
"What are you doing here, bitch?" She spat the words out, with all the venom she could muster.  
  
Kikyo merely watched calmly, her only motion a small twitch of the fingers. It was a signal that brought her soul stealers spiraling in more closely, as if such impotent beasties as these could really threaten a creature as powerful as Kagura.  
  
"Have you come here to challenge Naraku? You stupid corpse. What do you think you can hope to gain against him this time? Here alone, your powers drained by miasma, your strength sapped by the corruption in your soul. You haven't got a chance." Kagura scoffed, her relaxed pose a sham behind which she hid her readiness to spring into battle.  
  
"And you're the one to stop me?"  
  
"Hardly." Kagura laughed, "If I thought you could kill him, I'd stand by and cheer you on. But you can't do it. You stand there and judge me-- oh yes, you do, don't you? So you're a miko? The holiest of holy, the most powerful women in the land. So fucking What? You're also the bitch who's solely responsible for my existence. What the hell kind of miko lets a man like Onigumo enter into such a situation where Demons can tempt him like that? You had powers, you stupid cadaver! What else were they for? Where were your holy wards, your seals when they were most needed? You'd forgotten to place them, because you were out mooning over a fucking dog." Kagura let all her hatred ooze into her words as she spoke. She hated Naraku because of what he did to her, but she hated Kikyo more -- for it was the priestess' incompetence that had been directly responsible for this whole situation. If Naraku was her father, than Kikyo could be considered to be her mother. And oh gods, how she despised her. A priestess was supposed to be watchful, especially when they had a responsibility as great as the Shikon no Tama. But Kikyo had been anything but. And Kagura could never forgive her for that lapse.  
  
Kikyo watched Kagura's outburst calmly, before speaking again, as if Kagura hadn't just spent two minutes insulting her "Will you tell him that I'm here?"  
  
"No." Kagura sneered, "Not until you cross the boundary line."  
  
"What of your duty?"  
  
"What of yours?"  
  
Kikyo shrugged elegantly, "It will be taken care of."  
  
"Like a half-souled, undead, spiritually tainted whore like you can truly put an end to what you started."  
  
"I can only try." Kikyo smiled, an eerie mirthless smile. Before Kagura could react, the priestess had notched an arrow into her bow, and sent the feathered missile arcing towards the wind-demon. Impatiently, Kagura tried to knock it away with her winds, but the enchanted arrow refused to be swayed from its course, and in a flash, Kagura found herself reeling back, as the arrow embedded itself in her chest, right where her heart should rightfully have been. The pain was excruciating  
  
"Nice try." Kagura gasped, as she wrapped wiry fingers around the wooden shaft and wrenched the barbed tip free. Blood poured freely from the wound, but more agonizing was the pain that spread from the wound edges, like acid etching deeper and deeper into her flesh, as the purification spell on the arrow attempted to sear her body into oblivion. Luckily, if her punishment sessions with Naraku had given Kagura anything, it was a high pain threshold. And the pain of this wound was especially easy to bear, for the fact that it was physical only -- Nothing Kikyo could do would ever cause Kagura the same level of humiliation she endured at her father's hands. "Stupid bitch. You can't even kill me, how do you expect to kill Naraku?" Kagura's voice was raspy and breathless, and she noticed with irritation that a trickle of blood accompanied her words. That damned miko must've nicked her lung too.  
  
"So you don't have a heart?" Kikyo mused, staring intently at Kagura's bleeding torso. The magic from her arrow, though dissipating rapidly, had torn a hole deep enough that Kagura's ribs and the punctured lung beneath, were plainly visible.  
  
Kagura merely snorted and crossed her arms over her chest, hoping that she'd start to heal soon.  
  
"Pity." Kikyo murmured, almost as if to herself, "I don't have one either." Abruptly, she turned and vanished into the forest, leaving a much- bewildered Kagura to stare after her, wondering just what all of that had been about.  
  
A less then productive afternoon all 'round. Kagura shook her head, trying to clear it of the confusion that now threatened to overwhelm her. She'd utterly failed to get a rise out of Kikyo, and was still no more wiser to her plans than she had been. All she'd gained was an advance alert that Something might happen, and even that was dubious. Even Kikyo wasn't stupid enough to take on Naraku on her own. Not when her magic was so weakened that she couldn't even hurt Kagura.  
  
But that was where Kagura was wrong. . . As the wind-demon sat back on her feather and rose into the air, she was struck with a sudden wave of dizziness that left her faint and hardly able to see. Worse even than the usual hypotension brought on by excessive blood loss, this episode threatened to incapacitate Kagura completely. The feather dipped crazily as Kagura blinked, collapsed, and struggled to regain control. Finally, just within the safe border of Naraku's territory, Kagura lost the battle for consciousness entirely, and the feather tumbled to into the treetops, lodging Kagura's limp body somewhere in the dense forest canopy.  
  
Obviously, Kikyo's magic was a little more potent than the demon had bargained for. . .  
  
To be continued.  
  
~Damn, I don't think spur of the moment writing works so well for this fic. Oh well.~ 


	3. reflections

~~~wow. ff.net's code has really been sucking out recently. How totally lame. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to get some decent code-monkeys to volunteer to fix this crap. I mean really, updating everything just once a day? Still with the site overloads, and nonexistent chapters, and major review lossage. Wtf? In other news, I apologize for my utter pantlessness in spelling Naraku in the last chapters (it's fixed now). I have no idea what that was all about, although I suspect it has something to do with writing at 2 am while plagued by bizarre delusions involving midget mice gnawing on my poor poor brainmeats. ~~~  
  
Of blood and clay, chapter 3:  
  
Kikyo rested on one comfortable limb of a broad-branched tree. She was exhausted. This close to Naraku's evil miasma, there were few enough living souls, let alone those of the recently deceased, for her to feed from. Of course, attempting to blast a hole through Kagura hadn't really helped her energy supply any, either. Kikyo sighed mentally as she leaned back against the rough bole of the tree. The encounter hadn't gone as well as she could have hoped. An enchanted arrow like the one she'd fired should have shredded the wind demon to bits, not merely made her angry. However, it was intriguing that one such as Kagura, spawned as she was from Naraku himself, should have demonstrated such a resistance to an arrow coated not only with soil from Onigumo's cave, but with her own strong magics as well. Perhaps there was more to the demon than it appeared? Maybe she was more than an extension of Naraku's will? Kikyo wondered, for the first time, if maybe it would be possible to slay Naraku without first eliminating his numerous offspring? This would bear more thought. Kikyo let her head slump down in exhaustion, as she awaited the return of her soul- stealers.  
  
An observer on the ground below would not have noticed the undead priestess lurking overhead, for she made no sound at all as she rested, and her stillness was absolute. Inside the lump of clay that passed for her brain however, her thoughts could not remain still for long, no matter how she tried. If Kikyo had still possessed lungs with which to sigh, she would have. Daily, she regretted her continued existence on this earth. She was a priestess, it was her sacred calling to eliminate beings such as that which she'd become. She lived off of innocent souls, denying them the peace they so rightly deserved, just as she was denied her own rest. Oh, it was her own fault, she knew that too. . .  
  
Her own fault that she'd been weak, impure. . tempted and led astray by that half-feral half-demon, Inuyasha . A priestess didn't love -- wasn't allowed to have such simple human emotions. . . And now she knew why. Love cracked your armor; love clouded your vision; love. . . love led you to your death.  
  
Had she not been obsessed with the cursed hanyou, she'd have seen the look in Onigumo's eye, and she'd have set better wards and defenses against demons in that cave of his. Or better yet, she could have let him die. She'd known the herbs for that, as well she she'd known the herbs for healing. It could have been him that found his way to hell instead of herself. Such an act might have contradicted all her oaths to help people, but wouldn't it have bee for the best, if after all, Naraku had never been spawned?  
  
It was too late now, though. She was dead, returned to walk this lonely earth, with a hatred burning within; the betrayal with which she'd gone to her grave. Luckily, hatred didn't cloud the vision in the same way that love did. Kikyo hated Inuyasha now. Hated him with the same intensity she'd once loved him. And what was hatred anyway, but the flip side of love? Equal and opposite-- such extremes could only explode on contact. Yet, in her, they'd fused into a cold lump of stone around a heart of molten fire. Hatred and love could wait, contained, the one within the other, until she'd done her Duty, repaired her mistake, and rid the land of Naraku.  
  
Duty always came first. These days, she didn't have much else, not even her self respect. For, what self-respecting miko would let themselves be brought back from the dead, sustained on a fraction of stolen soul from a living being and by the desecration of hundreds more souls of the deceased? No, anyone who respected their title would have let death reclaim them at the first opportunity, rather than cling to this shallow simulacrum of life any longer.  
  
Her body; clay and bone -- no organs, no lungs, no need to eat, sleep, breathe. No sense of taste, nor any smell. She could feel, after a fashion, and see, and hear, even speak, despite the lack of a larynx, or lungs. She supposed she should be grateful for that, at least. But she missed the scent of the dawn, the taste of food. Sometimes, she wondered if the souls she absorbed had a taste. . . They had, each of them, a peculiar spiritual feel, as if she could read a sense of their lives as their energies merged with and became her own. But that wasn't the same thing as having savor and spice, now was it?  
  
And speaking of food. . . Kikyo looked up as she sensed the return of her soul stealers. Finally, it was time to feed. She stretched up one languid hand to receive the first of the proffered souls as her familiars swirled around her. Soon, it would be time to investigate the outskirts of Naraku's miasmic boundary, to see what new tricks the clever hanyou had come up with. . . and more importantly, to reflect on how she might defeat them.  
  
-------  
  
Naraku paced the corridors of his fortress restlessly. Kagura was late again. She was supposed to have returned from her patrol hours ago! But no, that little wench had to go disobeying his orders once again. You'd almost think she hadn't learned anything from their last little session. Stupid bitch. But she was his firstborn. So he was allowed to have made a few mistakes here and there in her birthing. No one was perfect, not even himself. Though, he did like to think he came close. . .  
  
Narku chuckled softly. Maybe he put up with her antics because he liked to see her impotent fury as she submitted to his will. Or maybe he just liked the way she screamed-- or rather, he frowned, the way she used to scream before she'd realized how much it angered him when she kept her silence. He'd always love the inhuman sounds that he'd once been able to tear from her throat. The delicious sound of an animal in agony. He'd always wondered if he could make Kikyo scream like that?  
  
No, no, that wasn't right, Naraku cursed himself silently; it was that damned Onigumo who wondered that. Honestly, you'd think that humans thought of nothing else but sex and pain. He had better things to do; like find out where that Kagura had got herself off to. He didn't have time for one of their sessions today. Kanna had scried for him this morning, and had managed to locate one of the few remaining shards not already in his possession (or that of Inuyasha's pathetic group), and he needed Kagura to go out and fetch it before they did. Not that it would be hard, the shard seemed to be moving around near the edge of his own domain. . . All Kagura had to do was go and get it from whatever sad excuse for a demon or human had found it. But that required her presence here first. . .  
  
And where the bloody fuck was she???  
  
Naraku felt his already short temper about to explode. His patience wasn't limitless. His foolish offspring had best be reminded of the consequences of angering him again so soon. . .  
  
It was this frame of mind that Kanna found him in, as the short girl stalked down the hallway towards her creator and master.  
  
"Ah. . . Kanna." Naraku crooned. One of his favorite children. Never disobedient, never impertinent. The perfect slave. Boring as all hell, not much of a conversationalist, and not built for carnal pleasures like Kagura. But still, much more useful in her own way. "What have you got for me, my dear?"  
  
Kanna mutely turned her mirror so he could see the scene therein. A dark forest, a giant feather lodged in a tree limb high above the ground, and in the foreground, the unmistakable figure of Kagura limply dangling from a tree, her shoulder impaled by one jagged branch, with spreading bloodstains adorning her shredded kimono.  
  
"Fuck. She's not dead is she?"  
  
Kanna shook her head slowly.  
  
Naraku scowled, furious with himself for the slip. Of course she wasn't dead. She'd never die until he let her. (Which, given his current mood, might be very soon now.) "You know where she is?"  
  
Kanna nodded.  
  
"Good. Leave her. You're going after the shard instead."  
  
What was the world coming to when he couldn't even trust his own offspring to do a simple border patrol without ending up half-dead in a tree? Kagura would pay for her carelessness with the pain she felt when she eventually awakened to find that her shoulder had healed with a tree stuck in it- a branch that would have to be bloodily, and messily, torn out before she could move again . Maybe it was time to get rid of her after all? . . .  
  
To be continued 


	4. twilight

~~~OK, I can hardly bend my fingers, I haven't got more than four hours of sleep per night in weeks, I haven't even thought about where the hell this plot is supposed to go, but I've been told I HAVE to update. So here's another chapter pulled straight out of my ass. Don't blame me if it's shit :) ~~~  
  
Kagura fluttered back into consciousness, accompanied by a throbbing ache in her back, and a sharp pain in her chest. The causes of both were immediately obvious: during her tumble from her feather, Kagura had crashed helplessly through the jagged tops of the fearsome trees that comprised this nearly impenetrable forest. All things being equal, while some branches tended towards the horizontal, others grew nearly vertical, and it was upon one of these that Kagura found herself gracelessly impaled. She hung there, high above the ground, her back arched painfully in gravity's pull.  
  
This just wasn't her week.  
  
Kagura blearily tried to focus on her predicament, but whatever spell had been on that arrow still hadn't worn off completely yet, and her brain remained fogged. It hurt to try to think, even. Almost as much as it hurt to try to move. She wasn't even sure how long she'd been hanging here. Experimentally, Kagura tried to raise her head. It wasn't the world's greatest idea: the slight movement sent tearing pains through her chest as the branch she encompassed damaged her further. Worse, it looked as though her body had tried to start healing Around this foreign object in her gut. She was just going to reopen everything if she moved one iota more. Naraku must be really pissed to have left her here for this long.  
  
Ah well, there was no help for it. Since Kagura couldn't actually die, each second spent here did nothing to hasten her end -- rather, it just prolonged what could be an eternity of suffering. Kagura sighed, wincing at the jagged pain of broken ribs and half-healed lungs. Right. Action. Though she couldn't focus properly on the offending branch Kagura reached up and seized it with both hands. The rough bark was still slick with her blood, gore, and the contents of her pierced gut. Ugh. Well, at least it'd cut down on friction.  
  
Stifling a groan, Kagura heaved, hauling her prone body up the penetrating branch by the strength of her arms alone. She could feel things internally ripping and shredding as the branch worked its way loose. The bark bits lodged in her liver would surely take Months to work their way out! Mentally, Kagura cursed the undead priestess for doing this to her. Nevertheless, it was her own weakness and stupidity in getting herself into this predicament that she cursed the most.  
  
At last, the deed was done. With the last of her strength, Kagura snapped the branch beneath her, and, as she fell; yanked the remaining jagged end from her body. Twisting with a catlike grace, even in her pain and weakness, Kagura managed to land, with not too many more scrapes and bruises, on her feet, on a large horizontal branch. She was too exhausted to move further. She would wait here until hr body had healed and her vision cleared. An involuntary shiver was quickly replaced with as bark of hatred as she considered the consequences of this action. Her master was likely already furious at her; a further delay in her return would only worsen the punishment she was sure to receive. But at this moment, she didn't care what Naraku had in store for her -- all she wanted was sleep. Curling around her torn and bloody kimono, Kagura made herself as comfortable as she could, and nestled there against the bole of the tree like some injured bird.  
  
-----  
  
Elsewhere in the twilit forest, Kanna made her silent way towards the aura her mirror had shown her. Though she moved as silently as the moon rising in the east, Kanna could not have been considered a creature of stealth-- rather, she glowed a cool white, like the moon: a desolate and lonely beacon lighting the shadowed depths of this lifeless wood. The analogy would have been completely lost on Kanna, however. This silent demoness cared nothing for trivialities like symbolism or beauty. In fact, it might be argued that she cared for nothing at all. Stoic and composed, she padded down silent paths, like some other-worldly spirit or ghost; just the shell of a body really; hardly any soul animated this petite frame.  
  
A fitting opponent to face an undead priestess who possessed only fragments of a soul herself, one might say. But they'd be wrong to think that.  
  
Kanna's power was in her mirror, and in the mental and spiritual manipulations it could perform. But how could she use it to steal Kikyo's soul, when Kikyo wasn't even its rightful owner. And how could she paralyze her with fear, if the scenes that played in her mirror were so much less awful than the reality Kikyo had seen -- and felt -- in hell? There was just no way. Perhaps it was good then, that Kanna had no idea that the shard she sought was, in truth, in Kikyo's possession. If she had known, and if she had been capable of more independent thought, she probably would have run back to Naraku for reinforcements, while quivering to the depth of her being in fear.  
  
But again, such was not the case, and Kanna continued her slow progress, unaware of the fate that awaited her at the end of the trail.  
  
-------  
  
Kikyo knew long before she saw the white figure what was approaching her. Her soul catchers had long since informed her-- but even if they had not, it wouldn't have been hard to guess: after all, Naraku only had so many offspring to deputize, and by now, Kikyo presumed that Kagura was safely out of commission. And in these woods, there was no threat But Naraku. And, of course, herself. . . Kikyo smiled a slow deadly, mirthless smile. She wasn't capable of humor anymore -- that is, if she ever had been, in the first place, but still was amused in a way at the thought.  
  
At last, Kanna approached her intended quarry. If her face was capable of expression, it would have registered shock that she was not facing some low- level youkai such as Naraku had expected, but instead the beautiful undead priestess. Now, While Kanna had few emotions, and less imagination, she was still a part of Naraku, and more importantly, there was more of Him in her psyche than any personality of her own. Thus, face to face with Naraku's true arch-nemesis and reason for existence, she couldn't help but feel awed and dismayed by the hatred and the longing that washed through her core. She, Kanna wasn't supposed to feel a thing, so how could such powerful emotions stir within?  
  
Something of this must have shown in her face, for Kikyo smiled at her: a sweet, sad smile, utterly devoid of true compassion.  
  
"Ah, you poor child," She murmured, as if speaking to one of the village children she had used to teach, "Has your master sent you out here alone to face me?"  
  
"Give me the shard" Kanna replied tonelessly, recovering from her confusion. She had a task to do. She couldn't let Naraku down, now matter how much the one shred of independent thought deep within told her to turn and run now before she was purified into nonexistence. Even as she spoke, she was readying her mirror for battle. She didn't think she would have a choice but to try to use it.  
  
"Really, Now. I don't think the Shikon is a toy for such as you." Kikyo chided, "Nor for your parent." Gracefully, she unslung her bow from her back, and stared down the diminutive demon in front of her, "Leave now with a message for Naraku, or die by my hand."  
  
"The shard." Kanna held out one ice-pale hand. Plainly she didn't believe Kikyo's threat. Or at least, that was what she wanted the priestess to believe.  
  
"No." Kikyo frowned sternly and in one smooth move, notched and released an arrow at the same instant that Kanna, with viper-like swiftness, flashed her mirror straight into Kikyo's eyes. . .  
  
Even to an untrained observer, the outcome of this short battle was never in doubt.  
  
To be continued.  
  
~~~There. I updated. Stupid plotless chapter. You happy now? Goddamn, my hands hurt. Now I sleep.~~~ 


	5. wind and stone

Kagura was awoken from her exhausted slumber a by a premonition of danger. She snapped upright suddenly, her every muscle tense with adrenaline as she reacted instinctively to the fear that coursed through her. She had no idea what was wrong-- what could go wrong within the miasmic confines of this forest. But plainly, something had.  
  
She forced herself to calm down, breath, take stock of the situation. During her brief nap, nestled up against this rough barked-tree, her major wounds had scabbed over, leaving her stiff and sore, but mobile, nevertheless. She was tired, and weak. She needed food, and soon. But she could stand, and she could fight.  
  
So what were her options? Kagura paused, mentally checking off the possibilities. She could return to the fortress, to face Naraku and his wrath. . . She didn't doubt but that he would have a great deal more pain in store for her for this afternoon's debacle. She could try and find Kikyo once more, in an attempt to recoup some of her injured pride, and. . . to be honest about it, to curry points with Naraku. If, that is, she managed to inflict any damage on the undead priestess. . . And in her current weakened state, that seemed like an unlikely proposition at best. And, finally, her third option; investigate the unknown disturbance that even now caused her heart to beat erratically with dread. It felt like a part of her was in danger, was dying, a great clawing ache in the pit of her stomach, telling her to run now before she too suffered the same fate.  
  
But Kagura would not run from her fear. Could not run. It was not in her nature. Naraku hadn't seen fit to endow her with such unnecessary self- preservation instincts. She was created as a tool, and she could not die until He discarded her. The fear signals her body sent her, were thus completely and utterly irrelevant.  
  
That was it then, Kagura realized. Patrolling these woods was her duty. If she returned to the castle without checking out a new threat, especially one strong enough for her to sense in her very bones -- and hence, probably strong enough for Naraku to get a whiff of on his own. . . well, what might happen then, just wasn't worth thinking about. (Memories of pain, and chains, and blood, and shame.) Resolutely, Kagura leapt down from her branch, landing lightly on the leaf-mould of the forest floor with a wince as her half-healed injuries absorbed the shock. She was far too tired to call up her feather and fly. Besides, such a threat as she currently felt, merited stealth, not speed. And so, cursing mentally as each step weakened and tore at her fresh scabs, she ran.  
  
Running through the dark forest towards danger, feeling like a gust of wind, as her light feet hit soft loam and pushed off again, as the branches whipped by her face and tangled in her hair. If it weren't for the pain, the weariness, and the sense of dread, it might almost have been fun. Kagura grinned, a fierce baring of tooth and fang. Running as if she were free, and not a slave, letting her mind go blank as she lost herself in the mindless rush of adrenaline and pulsing blood.  
  
But it was over far too soon. Kagura slowed her silent race, stopped, listened, went forward cautiously, as if directed by some inner magnet to a pole she never knew existed. The trees thinned suddenly, and Kagura found herself on the edge of a small clearing. The dread grew stronger. Kagura was suddenly unwilling to step out of the safety of the trees, to investigate that which pulled her here. But again, she had no choice. . .for, with her keen eyes, she had no trouble at all discerning the crumpled shape at the far edge, the white robes and white hair and white skin of her sister Kanna. Unmistakable, even lying broken and bloodstained and still on the cold forest floor. Beside her, Kanna's mirror lay broken, cracked in two, still reflecting Kanna's final plea for help. Unable to hold still, Kagura crossed the clearing, heedless of traps or the possibility of attack. She had to see for herself. . .  
  
Her sister, cold and vacant-eyed in life, seemed no more so in death. Almost as if she was merely asleep. Her blank face couldn't even show pain, and Kagura's lip curled in a silent snarl of contempt. Without emotion, without desires -- you were nothing. Worse than nothing! So yes, she despised her colorless sibling, despised her for her passionless existence, content to live, and die, a slave. But still, Kanna had called her here, her dying energies directed in one direction, her small, delicate hand outstretched on one-half of her cracked mirror, clutching desperately at the image that still pulsed murkily in its depths-- a beating heart. Her -- Kagura's-- Beating heart.  
  
No wonder she had awoken feeling chilled by death's icy fingers!  
  
Fiercely, Kagura kicked Kanna's hand aside, feeling little but vast sense of relief as the image in the mirror blurred, dimmed and, finally faded from existence, leaving her free to breathe again, without that gnawing sense of cold dread tickling at her core.  
  
Still, she was alert for danger. Something had killed Kanna. And just what that something was, was hardly any mystery at all. Kagura recognized the feathered shaft protruding from Kanna's throat. . . she'd had one just like it in her own lung mere hours before.  
  
Kikyo.  
  
A tingling in her spine, a whisper of wind in the short hairs at the back of her neck. Kagura spun on her heel, dropping into a defensive stance, brandishing her fans as if they could defend her from such power as Kikyo could wield.  
  
"So. You live." Kikyo stood, cool and dispassionate as ever, a short distance away.  
  
"If you can call it living." Kagura retorted sharply, acutely aware -- and somehow ashamed of, her disheveled state -- her torn clothes, the twigs and moss and leaves in her blood-matted hair, her own sticky and crusted blood covering the rags she had left. . . Compare that to Kikyo's calm perfection, her unflappable cool, her immaculate attire, seemingly untouched -- untouchable -- by any form of earthly grime, and anyone would feel inadequate.  
  
"Indeed." Kikyo paused, and regarded Kagura steadily, as if trying to determine what threat this battered demoness could possibly pose to her now.  
  
"Save your arrows for Naraku." Kagura growled unexpectedly at her hated enemy, recognizing the look in Kikyo's eyes. "Haven't you done enough tonight?"  
  
"It will never be enough." Kikyo said quietly, her unnatural stillness making her look like a statue carved from ice, her stony calm implying the same cool implacability of a glacier, "Until Naraku -- And All his spawn, are dead." Her marble eyes bored directly into Kagura's as she spoke, making no secret of just whom she was referring to.  
  
"Fine by me." Kagura shrugged in irritation, suddenly tired of all these games. Hatred could only do so much. She could hate this corrupted undead priestess, she could despise her for her failures, for her weaknesses. . . but it wouldn't change a damned thing. Kikyo could hurt her -- had hurt her-- but Kagura knew, unlike Kanna, she couldn't be killed until Naraku allowed her to -- or until he, himself, was dead. So fine, let Kikyo spout her fine words, let her pretend to be the purifying force she was supposed to have been at the start. Kagura just didn't care any more.  
  
And now, while Kagura wanted to feel the same fiery rage towards the corpse that she'd felt earlier that day, now she could only feel a sort of numbed antipathy, as if some of Kanna's cool had transferred to her, on that other's demise.  
  
Kikyo watched, her stillness masking surprise at the unexpected move, as Kagura sank to the ground by Kanna's side.  
  
"I may not have a heart, but she was still my sister." Kagura murmured absently, as if that explained anything. Gently, almost tenderly, (before now, she hadn't known she was even capable of tenderness,) Kagura gathered up Kanna's limp body in her arms. The small corpse seemed almost weightless in her strong arms, as she stood and faced Kikyo once more. Somehow she wanted to explain, to make the priestess understand all that she was responsible for. . . . The bonds that held this twisted family together: the hatred; the kinship; the same blood that filled all of their veins; the same innate patterning of all of their brains; the intense hatred/ love/ longing/ repulsion/ NEED -- all associated with images, memories of Kikyo. And All of it inherited from their predecessor, their father from whom they'd sprung, fully formed, fully aware, and fully functional. It united them, this mutant heritage. And so, while she despised Kanna, at the same time, she loved her too. She rejoiced in her passing for the blow it dealt Naraku. She mourned her death as the loss of a sister.  
  
She wanted to explain it, felt that Kikyo should know, should understand the complexity oft the situation She had wrought. . . But to do so would expose Kagura's own ambivalence towards her co-creator-- and that was a form of weakness. A weakness that could be exploited against her in future battles.  
  
No, it would not do.  
  
Thus, Kagura turned, tight lipped and grim, giving Kikyo a clear shot at her back, if the priestess had so desired to take one, and stalked with wounded grace, back into the miasmic heart of Naraku's domain, carrying her sad burden with her.  
  
Behind her, alone in the empty clearing, Kikyo let her bow fall silently to the ground. No sense of victory, nor any of defeat, for what battle had been fought here?  
  
If she had had a heart of her own, she might've been tempted to weep for the prideful, lonely, enslaved demoness. But she didn't. Her clay body couldn't produce tears anyway if she had wanted to. But she could relate.  
  
And, standing there, alone, in the wan light of the moon, Kikyo swore an oath. She would kill Naraku, not only for herself, but for her daughter -- the kindred spirit who so despised her. It couldn't atone for her pain, for the evil Naraku's existence had unleashed upon the world, but it would be a start.  
  
Suddenly, Kikyo smiled as a strange sensation crept through her chill limbs. Suddenly, hatred and duty weren't her only motivations. Suddenly, she knew . . . Even the dead could change. For now, she knew once more what sympathy felt like. What it was to care for another's pain. . . . And the war with Naraku would never be the same again.  
  
To be continued.  
  
~~~Wow. That chapter got really incoherent somewhere along the way. huh. Oh well. Ask me if I care enough to fix it. . . I'd also apologize again for slow updates, but as ever, my other 3 fics take precedence. ~~~ 


	6. persuasion

The castle walls; a dim outline against a clouded sky. Ebony on charcoal, clouded by miasma, obscured from prying eyes. Kagura could feel Naraku's dank stench enveloping her, as she approached steadily closer. Grimy, sweaty, covered in blood, her ornate kimono shredded, pierced by branches, studded with twigs and leaves, nevertheless, Kagura cut an imposing figure. Muscles as strong as carbon steel, smoothed only by her deceptively soft curves. Her eyes blazed fury, while cold determination etched itself in every limb. Her arms wrapped tightly around a limp white bundle; white with seeping red. You could have made a statue of her. Made it out of ice, and named it Sorrow. For Kanna, For herself, even for Kikyo, and all the other lives twisted and warped by Naraku's existence, Onigumo included.

Sorrow. Hah! Kagura's lips twisted in a sardonic sneer. Who had time for such niceties? Not her, not now. Would her time ever come? Who cared?

Bracing herself for Naraku's displeasure, Kagura kicked open the thick wooden doors leading into the keep. There were no guards to open them for her, nor any sort of human presence now -- unless you counted the lingering traces of blood splashed carelessly across the walls. Unsurprisingly enough, Naraku had not come up to greet her. Probably felt it was beneath his dignity to grace her return with his presence. Or perhaps he simply intended to make her crawl for his forgiveness. No matter. Kagura would do whatever she had to. Whatever it took to survive.

Deliberately, Kagura paced down the darkened hallway-- what need had she for light, with her demon eyesight? Down the stairs, and down again. The dungeons, Naraku's second favorite lair, losing only to the throne room in preference. And there he was, lounging in deceptive tranquility against the dank stone wall. Dark eyes flashed with rage as he took in Kagura's appearance, the body in her arms.

"What happened?" His miasma may have given him a sense of the battle, but lacking Kanna's mirror, or other witnesses, he couldn't know the details.

"Kikyo." Kagura let the despised name drip like venom from her icy lips.

Naraku's sudden stillness betrayed his shock. Kagura winced at his loss of composure-- for that never boded well for her own future.

"Tell Me."

Kagura steeled herself, drew up her frame like a soldier at a debriefing, and phrased her words ever so carefully. The truth, and nothing but the truth. Mostly. But not the whole truth. Not for him.

"Kikyo. She was waiting outside your territory; scouting, perhaps for that bastard hanyou and his band. I sniffed her out after my reconnaissance. Went to take a look. I didn't know she had a shard. I descended, confronted her. She shot me. I didn't die." Naraku knew quite well that she couldn't die unless he allowed her to. "But I was weakened. I thought it best to retreat and inform you of this development I didn't make it. I lost consciousness for a long time. When I recovered, I felt a call. I followed it. I found Kanna, dead. Her mirror shattered. This was in her throat." Almost casually, Kagura held out a bloody arrow. A holy arrow-- a relic, that she, a demon, should not have been able to touch, much less carry on her person. At the very least, it should be wracking her with holy fire, singeing her soul down to its very roots. But it was not. And Yet. . . Naraku could feel, even from across the room, the purity pulsating from the innocuous-seeming shaft.

"Destroy that!" He commanded sharply. Who knew what powers that arrow might possess to wound him?

"I can't" Kagura shrugged. "It's Kikyo's. I had one like it . . . almost. . . in my chest. Why did that one burn me, but not this one? I thought it might be important." Important. Oh yes. That it was. But She was quite sure Naraku didn't realize just how important it was.

The Truth and nothing but the truth . . . But not the whole truth. Indeed.

The truth; that as she'd turned away from Kikyo, turned with Kanna in her arms; turned to give Kikyo a clear shot at her back; turned towards her doom, she'd been called back.

"Wait." Was it a command or a plea? Hard to tell with the walking corpse. At first, Kagura had not wanted to-- for what could the priestess possibly have to say to her now that she'd killed her sister? Kagura'd taken one step further, and then another before she'd faltered. Curiosity winning over hatred. She'd turned then, a lofted eyebrow the only sign of inquiry she would permit herself.

"You want Naraku dead."

Kagura's gaze remained level, a small tightening around her eyes and mouth indicating assent -- if one wanted to read that far into it. After all, Kagura had to be careful. Here on the edge of Naraku's domain who knew what spies he'd have reporting back to him? What strange perceptions and suspicions his miasma might convey?

Kikyo regarded the wind demoness silently for a long moment, eyes as hard as marble, and as expressionless. She must've seen something she liked there, for eventually, her features softened in understanding, and she gave a curt nod. "We have much in common."

"What?" Kagura sneered, her hatred for the dead miko roiling sullenly to the surface, "We're both miserable failures? We're both derelict in our duty? Spare me, please. I have work to do."

"But no life to live."

"At least I'm not a spiritual perversion." Why she was wasting breath arguing with a sworn enemy, she hadn't the slightest idea.

"Really?" Kikyo arched a skeptical eyebrow, "What, exactly, do you think Naraku is? And you, a child of his flesh. . ." The implication was obvious. Sins of the fathers, and all that.

"And whose fault is that?" And back around to the same old hatred, "I'd kill you in a second, if I thought that would undo his existence; I'd sell my soul to see him dead."

"Ahh." Almost a silent sigh. Kikyo's lips curved in the barest hint of a smile. The sigh was obviously meant to be heard -- the dead do not breathe, the dead do not need to sigh.

"What?!" Kagura's patience was running short, her temper gone, with her sister's body cold in her arms, the killer mere paces away.

"Your soul. . ." softly, like a cool silk caress, like a promise sheathed in steel

"What about it, bitch? I haven't got time for your mind games! If you want something from me, you godsdamned better well spit it out. You think I want to be talking to you? You disgust me. You stink of the grave. Unless you plan to attack me, you're wasting my time, and yours."

"Not a waste of time." Kikyo's voice hardened suddenly, her eyes flashing to life. "So I made a mistakes. I was only human after all. You think I didn't suffer in hell for my dereliction? Hah. You don't know what pain is. But I will rectify my errors, I will purge the world of Naraku. And you're going to help me."

"What makes you so sure?" Kagura tensed at the change in Kikyo's tone, sinking into a defensive posture as best she could, burdened with her sister's body. There was a threat there, of that she was sure.

"Because," Kikyo smiled thinly, "If you don't, you'll never get your heart back. You'll wander the earth like me, unable to die, unable to truly live." The worst fate she could imagine.

"Eh." Kagura shrugged. How was that any worse than what she had now. But curiosity still propelled her forward, "And what do you propose?"

"What do you know about souls?" the priestess shot back.

Not much. She was a demon, what did they care for souls? Did she even have one? Hell if she knew.

"Well then. . ." Apparently, souls were a complex business. More so in Kagura's case. Naraku was an anomaly among creatures, a fusion of multitudinous souls in one protoplasmic body. Kagura and Naraku's other offspring were created by the fusion and confusion, the recombination, even, of some of these souls -- a traumatic event culminating in their forced expulsion from his body. But. . . A link remained. A fractured soul had a link to its other fragment -- an affinity, if you will. Kikyo would know-- after all, she could feel a pulsing in what passed for her soul when Kagome was near, flashes of pain or fear, sometimes even joy when those emotions ran strongest in her reincarnation. All in all, an alien intrusion into her current numbed existence. That of course, was not the important issue for Kagura -- no, for her what mattered, was that the soul-link could be used as a weapon. A weapon that Kikyo knew how to exploit.

A weapon for which she needed Kagura.

But first.

"Why are you telling me this?" Kagura had the right to be suspicious.

"To right a wrong." It was what mikos were supposed to do.

"Not good enough."

To be honest, even Kikyo herself wasn't sure why she was confiding in one of her bitterest enemies. But there it was, she felt sympathy for Kagura, felt almost a kinship for her plight. Not that the demoness wanted or needed her pity. So, an answer, truth, but not the only truth.

"To kill Naraku-- I'll use whatever tools I have to." Steely determination. "And that's you."

Kagura nodded. That sort of callous manipulation, she could understand.

The plan went forward.

The arrow embedded in Kanna's throat, enspelled. A decoy for Naraku's paranoia. Its importance not in itself, but in the other ploys it concealed.

---

"Destroy it." Naraku's command

"I can't" Kagura's sullen reply.

What could he do about it? That shaft was purified by Kikyo, coated in mud from Onigumo's cave. If he were to touch it, it would seek his center, purify him out of existence. But how could Kagura touch it? And why wasn't she destroyed? Naraku wanted answers. And he wanted them now.

Fortunately, he knew just how to get them.

Naraku licked his lips in anticipation.

Kagura shivered. But not in fear. For she could no longer feel fear.

She had sold her soul.

Ok, perhaps -- Given it away -- was more accurate.

Without a soul, you cannot feel fear. You cannot feel much of anything at all.

And without a soul to purify, Holy arrows can do no harm.

But how was Naraku to know that?

Kagura shivered. Not in fear, but in Anticipation.

TBC.

--- holy hell, has it been a year since I updated this? I'm such a loser. Writing fantasy is not my forte, or my main interest. Thank you all for reviewing despite my lameness. I don't deserve your praise. Especially you, Sheen. If I could blush, I'd be scarlet after reading your reviews!! Thanks so much. I'm truly honored by your words -- I mean, so much that I actually wrote a chapter after I saw all those reviews the other night. Sorry, there's less character, more 'plot', but I gotta do plot sometime. Even if it is stupidly short.

So here's my irrelevantly terrible gift to those who are actually reading this fic. Ever wonder what the good guys are up to while this story is taking place? Well, wonder no longer. . . .

White Bread

(Or, what the good guys are up to tonight)

A comedy

"Too white bread!"

"You think? But with those indecent skirts and all?"

"Sign of childishness. A Woman should know better."

". . .But the view?"

"Is great."

" . . . and when you carry her?"

"Feh, what do you think, Monk? The wench is built!"

". . .ahh, my friend. Sometimes I do envy you."

"Feh! It's all look but don't touch, well, except for the carrying thing. And you think, if you did get under her skirt, she'd be exciting, passionate maybe? You're so fucking full of it. Stick to Sango. That's my advice."

"But. . ."

"Come off it, Monk, you and I both know, Kagome in the sack would be about as exciting as a sack of mud. And then, she'd probably go pout about it. I fucking hate the pouting! Like everything's my fault! Who the fuck raised her? Show some fucking personal responsibility, I say. You want something. you gotta go out and get it, 'stead of being little miss perfect passive-aggressive goody two shoes all the fucking time."

"All right, all right already, just calm down a bit." Miroku hesitated, but couldn't resist his next question, despite the risk that Inuyasha might tear him to shreds, "What about Kikyo?"

"There's just no comparison." Inuyasha perked up at the seeming change of subject. "Kikyo is. . Kikyo is. . She's like ice, you know, perfect and pure and sharp and deadly. She's direct, she doesn't fool around. God I love that bitch."

Miroku raised an eyebrow, "But a miko? Not too pure for you? Too what was it you called Kagome -- White bread?" (Miroku had only had white bread one time, a special treat from Kagome's time. It had, indeed, been spongy and bland.)

"Feh! you're a Buddhist monk. What's that got to do with anything? Holy power is holy power. 'S got nothing to do with Fucking!"

"Ah."

"Don't give me that look."

"What look?"

"That Look, All innocent and 'I don't know what the fuck you're talking about' That look."

"You wound me, Inuyasha."

"Yeah, I'll fucking show you wounding." He raised gleaming claws, a not so subtle threat. "You know just as well as I, that Spirituality is just another skill. Some are born with ability, others learn it."

"That was surprisingly articulate."

"Fuck, Monk. Who the hell do you think I am?"

"A bad-mannered Hanyou?" Miroku teased, backing away rapidly, nevertheless.

"Bastard." Inuyasha bared his fangs, but without real rancor.

"No that's you."

"Feh. Still had an education. Lord's son and all."

"You don't act like it."

"Fifty years stuck to a tree, and you expect me to be in a good mood?"

"So all the surliness-- You've just been sulking?"

"Why not?"

"Indeed." Miroku pondered for a moment, "My friend, you need to get laid."

"This is news?"

"Ahh.. . ." A soft sigh of revelation, "Not just sulking, Horny and sulking."

"Feh. Kagome."

"And all the looky no touchy."

"Fucking Hell." A frustrating Tease.

"Kikyo."

"Hello . . . Dead? The dead don't fuck."

"Sango?"

"Feh. No good. She likes to be on top."

"So true." Miroku smiled contentedly at his own memories-- just the way he liked it. "Shippo?"

"Too young."

"Picky, Picky"

"Feh! You'd fuck anything."

"Except Kagome."

"Hell, you'd screw her if she 'd let you."

Miroku shrugged in self deprecation. "So would you."

"Feh. So? You gonna find me a whore, or are we gonna fuck.?"

"We're going to fuck."

"About fucking time."

"Mmmm." An appreciative sigh, soon replaced by the sounds of flesh on flesh, gasps and grunts.

Several Prolonged climaxes later.

"No White bread that." Still hard and firm and ready for more.

"Maybe we should get Sango over here after all."

"Feh. Get back here. I'm not fucking done fucking you."

50 years of pent-up demon sexual frustration to relieve. Miroku groaned; not entirely in exasperation.

It was gonna be a long, hard night.

But then again, he'd choose a hot dog between his buns, over white bread any day.

.End.

---God that was bad. I just had to write it. And being written, to post it somewhere. So very very sorry-----cm---


	7. duplicity

. . Well shit, yo. I realized I should update this thing, while I'm sitting uselessly around, and whoa, I read the last chapter, and. . . umm . . I have no Idea where I thought I was going with that. Doh! So here's a guess. . .

Kikyo stood in the dark forest, holding Kagura's borrowed soul in her hands. She could feel the pulsing of the soul, the vitality that came from belonging to a living being. The soul wanted to reunite with its body. But which body? Kikyo frowned in concentration; if released, would this bundle of energy snap back into Kagura, or would it fracture into all of its original components, would it fly into Naraku? And could it be made to carry her holy energy with it?

Idly, Kikyo caressed the errant soul. It had a warmth about it, an attraction, that the prickly Kagura tried so hard to hide beneath her brittle, cynical exterior. Maybe if she held it long enough, it could warm even Kikyo's cold hands, her cold and unbeating clay heart. Oh, she could absorb it, for sure, but that would not serve her purpose at all. This soul was not meant for her sustenance, but for her retribution.

Kikyo lifted the bundle of energy to her forehead, murmured a prayer, tried to align her tainted soul with that she held in her hands, and concentrated on establishing the rapport. It would have been impossible had she not had the taint on her own soul. It would have been impossible had Kagura not possessed a kind of bracing spiritual purity of her own – the purity of soul that kept her fighting against Naraku in whatever small ways she could despite the total control he had over her life, her death, and her freedom. The task was also made easier by the emotional kinship the two women –the one undead, the other demon—possessed. Oh, it was not a kinship either would have gladly recognized, or admitted, but it was there: the embittered women, enslaved by forces beyond their control, trapped in a destiny they would not have chosen for themselves, forced to compromise, and hating themselves for those compromises, yet still possessed of a fierce dignity and a serenity of purpose that nothing could sway.

Kikyo braced herself as she made contact. Her cool eyelids slid closed over dry lifeless eyes as the pulse ran through her, the pulse of pain that reverberated through Kagura's soul. She gasped in shock as the feeling spread—this was far stronger than she had anticipated, stronger and more vivid. In fact, vivid enough that Kikyo felt her entire being aligning with Kagura, feeling with her flesh of clay, what Kagura's muscle and blood and skin felt, seeing behind closed eyes what Kagura's wide open orbs beheld. And the sudden torrent of emotions that ran through her was almost too much to take. Emotions that she in her muted undead form, was unable to feel for herself anymore. All the things that Kagura would have felt, had her soul been in her body—fear, rage, hate, even hope, now transmitted to Kikyo instead.

If she could have torn herself away from the experience, Kikyo might have paused to reflect that this was not quite what she'd had in mind. But it was too late for second thoughts. The similarities that the two women shared strengthened the contact between their souls, amplifying upon itself in a horrific feedback loop, until Kikyo thought she would explode with the intensity of it all. Instead, something else happened.

"This is what you get for playing with things you do not fully understand," Kikyo managed to think almost regretfully, "What you get for acting hastily like your misbegotten reincarnation." It was the last thing she managed to think of her own volition before she felt her own soul open up and dissolve, merging with Kagura's, the synergy between the two throwing up energy like sparks in the air. Even Kagura felt it, miles away in Naraku's dungeon. Felt it, just as he felt the sparks leaping off her skin at that moment.

That wasn't all though. What Kikyo had inadvertently managed to trigger, was something like the event that had created Naraku from Onigumo and the demon swarm. For all intensive purposes, she and Kagura were now one being. Albeit in two very different bodies. It must have been an underlying function remaining in Kagura when she'd been born from Naraku, the capacity to merge and separate out souls and bodies like her parent.

With the sparks came a more substantial change. Kagura and Kikyo didn't quite merge completely. No, they managed to retain some individuality, but it was undeniable, they were psychically linked-- each able to see through the other's eyes, feel what the other felt, (which, in Kikyo's body of clay, wasn't much, but even so). . . Moreover, they now each possessed some of the other's memories and skills—their hopes and desires already overlapped enough that they hardly even noticed the change in that. And, they could communicate with the other. Maybe not in words, but in impressions and sensations, directives and motivations. Very abstract. But enough.

Kikyo reeled with the shock. For her, perhaps, it was worse (what there was left of her own self to be called her Her, that is), to feel all the things which she had been denied for so long—it was like being alive again. She felt alive!

Kagura would have reeled in shock, except, for the small little fact that she was already chained to the wall, in the dungeon, as usual, with Naraku preparing to hurt her, again, as usual. It's rather hard to reel when you're splayed across the wall. She did gasp, though, when the soul she now shared with Kikyo reunited with her in a rather dramatic way. She'd been rather enjoying the emotionless serenity of soullessness, the incapacity of feeling. Now, suddenly, Wham! It was back, and not just back, but with the added burden of Kikyo's cool presence impinging on everything. Her enemy, her mother, her soul.

The sparks emanating from Kagura's skin at this merger were a bit of a problem. Naraku could not fail to notice them. He did not fail to notice them.

Cruel hands brushed along Kagura's skin, feeling the bright energy nipping at his flesh, like little electric shocks. Stimulating, almost arousing, the way they pricked. That was how he liked his Kagura. Feisty and Prickly.

The way she'd looked at him when she'd returned with Kanna's corpse, cool and emotionless. No, he hadn't liked that at all. Then she'd reminded him of Kikyo, that undead bitch. He didn't want anyone reminding him of Kikyo, save the miko herself. She was special, she was the only . . . She was what all of this was about. Subjugating her, killing her brutally and corrupting her dead flesh, that would be the ultimate victory to be savored in its uniqueness. Nothing else should come close. He wanted no preview. Nothing but the real thing. So Kagura's little display of reserve hadn't pleased him at all. He'd chained her up, but hadn't been able to bring himself to begin his little torture session, which he usually did so enjoy, because she just felt so wrong.

He'd almost begun to wonder if the little minx was doing it deliberately to piss him off, when the sparks began to shoot from her skin, and her eyes to blaze up, like her aura was blazing now.

This was more like it.

Naraku grinned, that menacing, predator's expression exuding naught but an icy malice, directed at his errant offspring.

"Now, tell me, daughter. . . " he drawled, as his sharp nails traced bloody patterns in Kagura's skin, "Tell me everything that happened this evening."

Kagura took a deep breath, hardly even feeling the cruel attentions of her parent, so absorbed was she in the novel sensations of seeing through two sets of eyes, of feeling through two sets of skins, and what was most confusing, of feeling another's thoughts impinging upon her own. She could feel Kikyo's icy serenity washing through her, calming her against even the worst Naraku could do. If she closed her eyes against Naraku, she could pretend she was only in Kikyo's body, feeling the cool press of the earth against her, numb to all pain. In contrast, Kikyo was almost reveling in the ability to feel again, albeit the uncomfortable sensations that Naraku was inflicting upon the defenseless wind demon.

"Ah Naraku." It was Kagura's voice that spoke, but not her mind behind it. Kikyo had borrowed the body, while Kagura's consciousness sought momentary respite in her vessel of clay.

Naraku started. The intonation was Nothing like Kagura's normal tone of repressed hatred. No, there was something far too chilly, too untouchable and expressionless in this voice. Too much like Kikyo. And the eyes, when they opened to stare into his pale face; so calm, so utterly collected. This was not Kagura, and he knew it. He didn't know enough to be afraid, however.

"Not a proper father, are you Naraku?" Kagura's voice asked distantly, as if speaking from far away, "To treat your daughter so. Is this the power you seek? Power over your children, to abuse them as you will? So petty. I would have expected better from Onigumo at least. He may have been a thief and a murderer, but at least he had ambition. Why seek the Shikon no Tama, when your imagination is so limited? You would not know how to use it properly anyway."

"Who are you?" Naraku's eyes narrowed in suspicion, "And what have you done with My daughter?"

Kikyo just gazed at him steadily through Kagura's eyes, expressionless as ever. It was easy to keep the face still when she was busy trying to figure out how to produce holy energy from a demon body. She wasn't sure it was possible, and somehow she was loathe to attempt anything that might begin to purify Kagura from the inside out without doing Naraku any harm.

"Miko." Naraku fairly hissed the word, as he recognized the expression, made the connection between the arrow Kagura had borne and the voice speaking to him now. "Your illusion is impressive." He thought Kikyo had slain Kagura and was pretending to be her, "But it will do you no good now." After all, she was chained to his dungeon, and therefore subject to his every whim. It was almost anticlimactic, how easily she had fallen. Perhaps she had not expected Naraku to treat his offspring like this. But he was no fool, if this was the undead miko, he would take extra precautions. And then he would enjoy this moment as he had always desired. Reveling in her complete degradation, until she begged him to hurt her more. "But you are foolish. And now you are mine . . ."

He moved in for the kill. Sinister and dark, he allowed his tentacles to spread, enough miasma polluting the air to incapacitate all but the strongest enemy, or any child of his flesh. Naraku glided forward with a predator's deadly grace, his tentacles adding to the chains that bound Kagura to the wall, caressing her flesh with cruel stings, slithering into her most intimate places, even as his sharp nails gouged into her skin.

But for all his hungry immediacy, he was too slow. Too slow to capture his elusive prey. Kagura, watching from the safe distance of Kikyo's mind, reacted first. It was not in her to let another suffer this in her place, even if that other was one whom she had long hated. Kikyo was a part of her now, whether she wanted it or nay, just as she was a part of Kikyo. And there was no way in any hell there might be, that Kagura was going to allow this—allow a miko, tainted as she might be, to suffer further degradation at the hands and body of a creature as depraved as Naraku.

Naraku assumed that the hoarse "No!" that sprang from her throat was a desperate cry for help, when, in reality, it was simply Kagura forcing her own consciousness back into her battered body, taking on the pain that was meant for another.

"Oh yessssss……………" was all the reply he offered.

Inside her head, Kagura forced the miko's awareness to the back, where she could not feel the awful sensations of her flesh, until it was only Kagura, alone, assuming the burden of her pain, while Kikyo, deprived temporarily of access to Kagura's senses, retreated to plan their course of action. . .

Eventually, Naraku would realize that it truly was Kagura upon whom he had unleashed his fierce appetites. And then his punishment of her would double. But she would gladly bear that burden, for now she had an ally, the most unlikely ally she could ever have imagined herself to possess. At the end of the night, when she hung in her chains, battered, bruised, and bleeding, it was Kikyo's cool voice that whispered in her mind, Kikyo's cool caresses in her soul that numbed the pain, almost like a mother would, and Kikyo whose soul embraced hers tightly, the sum greater than their parts. And almost, she felt hope. For while she might not understand how their plan had gone awry, for once she was not alone. She might never be alone again . .

TBC

. . . hmm. . . this chapter was hard to write, didn't come out all that well, and was probably not where I thought I was going last time I left off on this fic, but at least I got the kik/kagu leg of the triangle all settled. Not exactly romantic or even sexual, but who said it had to be? . . until next time, whenever that might be. . . cm. . .


	8. hunger

He laughed in the dark.

Around him, the darkness laughed.

He was alone, surrounded by the dark. It never let him be. Sometimes it talked to him, and sometimes he talked to it. Sometimes he thought he was the darkness. Until he remembered.

The Darkness laughed. It gibbered. It howled. He howled. He giggled. He cursed.

Around him, it breathed. The dark. Warm exhalations like steam into a winter's night. Dank and musty. A smell of mud and clay and mold. The smell of decay. A damp smell. He knew that smell. It had been with him forever. It was cold in the dark, a damp cold, it seeped into every fibre of his being, until he could not get warm again. Even his bones felt sodden and chilled. Did he even have bones anymore? Cold everywhere. So cold, except where it burned. He remembered burning. Those parts felt hot, an eternal fiery agony that never ended. Yet he was never warm.

Here in the darkness within, Onigumo felt cold. And he remembered. He remembered the months in the cave, alone, in the cold, the dankness seeping under his charred skin, until all he could feel was the pain and the ice. She should have let him die. Kikyo. Instead, she'd tended him, the one soul who'd shown him kindness. Hah, that sort of chill kindness was torture too. She'd tortured him. Her unyielding ice brought no warmth to his chilled flesh, only burnt his heart, and left him lonely, alone, in the dark.

And then they'd come. They'd whispered lies in his ears. Told him he'd never be alone, that he'd be all-powerful, and great. That revenge could be his. And then he'd have her. Kikyo. Right where he wanted her. Power and Hate and Lust and Revenge. And it had felt warm. Not hope, for there is no hope in hate, but elation. The desperate spasm of a dying heart.

But it had been lies. All of it. He'd succumbed. He'd let them in. The ravening hordes. He thought the monsters in his soul would be a match for the monsters without. But he was wrong. Oh so very wrong. They'd entered him, and they'd torn him apart. Invaded his body, invaded his mind, sent him screaming for the light. His body torn to shreds, subsumed into the greater all, his mind fractured and reeling. Who was he?

They called himself Naraku, the greatest Hanyou of all time. Greatest, but still a Hanyou at that. No matter how much he spawned, and reformed himself, no matter how many youkai he absorbed, he was still a partblood. Because he had a human heart. Without the heart, Naraku would die. The rest of Onigumo had no value. But try as he could, Naraku could not eliminate that wailing voice within.

Onigumo, long since driven to insanity, the fractured remnants of self locked in the deepest, darkest corners of that which Naraku called a mind. He existed solely out of spite. To spite Naraku, to Spite Kikyo. He liked to think that Kagura had inherited some large part of himself, that her obstinacy was some form of payback for the lie that Onigumo had become.

And Kikyo. Onigumo reveled in enforcing Naraku's weakness. If he could not have her, then Naraku would not kill her.

His one goal. That they all might perish. Once he had longed for money. Fire had destroyed that. Once he had longed for love. Kikyo had denied him. Once he had longed to live again. Naraku had changed all that. Now he only longed for death. Death would free him from the dark, the cold. Death would free him from the laughter. Even hell would be better than living as a fragment. Death would be preferable to this insanity.

Locked in the dark, Onigumo listened to Naraku giggling to himself, the conversations of a hundred fragmented youkai. The gibbering, teeming madness of a soul too full. Locked in the dark, Onigumo waited for his chance. Locked in the dark, Onigumo watched. Locked in the dark, Onigumo laughed.

His time would come.

----

Released from the dungeon at last, Kagura rested, healing her wounds and sleeping in a pile of feathers. In the back of her mind, she could hear the echoes of Kikyo's soul muttering to herself. Plotting. Planning. Let her plan, let her scheme away. Kagura was a creature of action. If Kikyo was willing and able to do the thinking, Kagura would wait and heal and grow strong until called upon to do her part. Revenge would be theirs. Revenge, and . . maybe even. . . freedom.

---

Kikyo reclined against an ancient oak tree, feeding on the souls of those less fortunate than she. She'd had to retreat for the time being, at least physically, that her soul-stealers might find and deliver her food without Naraku's detection. But mentally, she remained tied into Kagura's senses and her soul. Reveling in the sensation, the emotion, the hungers that washed through the demon. They were entrancing, addicting, after so long without, and Kikyo found herself distracted from her task. _How to slay Naraku?_ That was the question that weighted heavily on her, yet that she could not give the full span of her attention to, not with these feelings and desires and sensations coursing vicariously through her soul.

Kikyo shut her eyes, as if to block Kagura out. But the link came from within, and this was no help. She could cut off the flow of her soul to Kagura, as Kagura had done to her when tortured by Naraku, but not vice versa. And now Kagura was too far gone in sleep to shield herself. Kikyo could taste her dreams.

Kagura dreamed of flying, of cool breezes and sunny skies. She dreamed of blood and pain and chains. Of corpses and battles. Of a brutally beating heart.

And these images were no help. Kikyo allowed herself a frown. She already knew what they were and what they desired. They were trapped, they were slaves to their fate, and they desired revenge and freedom and death. The question though, was How? How could they achieve this?

Kikyo had originally taken Kagura's soul with the intent to somehow purify Naraku through his link with that soul. Instead, she'd ended up linked to Kagura, a creature with two minds, two bodies, but one will. Like a hanyou, but not. Like Naraku and his spawn, but not. How could such a thing be? She was an undead priestess, not even alive, not even possessing an entire soul to call her own, yet still possessed of holy energy, however tainted as it might be by her unclean pseudoflesh. If they were linked, could they merge more fully? Would the holy energy remain hers to wield or would it dissipate in the surge of Youki? Would it destroy them both?

What if Naraku were to resorb Kagura into his being? Would her memories become his—would her soul become his? Kikyo felt a surge of horror—would _She_, herself become a part of him? And what of her holy energy then?

And yet, despite the horror, Kikyo found her self returning to this idea time and again. Merger, the three of them, Simultaneously. An orgy of self destruction. Her cold clay heart shivered at the thought; the erosive force of miasma tainting her core, the holy fire coursing through his – through _their_ body. Alone, Kagura could not wield the fire, merged, the two could not hoodwink their way through Naraku's defenses.

But what if Kagura were to provoke her sire into a fit of pique so great that he performed the ultimate retribution. Not death, Not torture, but to be rendered once more into the seething madness from whence she'd sprung. And what if, at that very moment when Kagura's body and spirit stood on the verge of being rent asunder, she called Kikyo into her. Then, in that moment, they could burn as one, the demon lending strength to her coruscations of holy energy.

It was risky. There could be no partial victory. Only absolute destruction or total defeat. Nothing else would do.

Could she risk it? Could Kagura?

How could they not?

In that moment, the two women thought as one. No words, no images, no thoughts needed to be shared. Their united subconscious flared in a silent warcry. Two huntresses lying in wait.

Their time would come.

TBC


	9. conflagration

Bards and dramatists would forever after refer to it as the final battle. Hah, what do bards know, anyway? Any old soldier could tell you that there is no such thing as a final battle, only a series of new campaigns. There is always a new enemy to fight, somewhere. Politicians, too, would scoff at the notion of a final battle. Battle implies troop movement, logistics, war, mass casualties. This, they would insist, was an assassination. No more a final battle than the murder of Lincoln was to be, many centuries later. Historians would laugh, and point out that more often than not, the final battle in a war was an accident; a chance encounter between a scouting force, long out of contact with HQ, and a straggling, lost remnant of the enemy army. They would point out that these final battles were trivial things, mere footnotes to be brushed under the carpet of the collective memory as embarrassments that occurred long after the peace treaties had been signed, fights that had no importance whatsoever in the outcome in the war.

And the thing is, all these detractors would be correct. The death of Naraku was not the final battle in the war against evil, greed, imperialism, stupidity. Those wars might never end. But for those who died, it was the final battle. Their final battle.

For many of the other involved parties, the final battle would come much much later. For Sango, the final battle came on the day her fifth child miscarried. Massive hemorrhage brought her down, where no demon could. For Miroku, the final battle was just one more skirmish in the war against old age, and a liver that could not tolerate any more years of hard drinking. Kouga's final battle was a glorious one defending his pack against marauding hordes of demon rats. Afterwards, they couldn't even find enough left of him for a suitable burial.

Inuyasha's final battle gave the victory to brash impulsivity. One stupid mistake against a foe he had scoffed at, complacent in his strength and title. Kagome fought a war against herself, and ended her days a victim of modern society, hit by a car as she crossed the street, lost in memories of what she'd left behind in the past.

No one knows what Sesshoumaru's final battle may have been, or even where it was fought. He disappeared from society after burying his foolish half-brother in an unmarked grave, and even the most determined of seekers has yet to find evidence of his remains.

So many little battles to fight, so many wars. So many trivial ways to die.

But those deaths were all in the future, and this was the Now.

Kikyo wondered, as she sat at the edge of Naraku's domain gathering her strength, if it counted as the end if you were already dead?

Perched in her aerie in the castle, Kagura watched scudding storm clouds overhead. She could almost taste the ozone, feel the wind rushing through her hair. What would it be like to know that freedom completely? She would never know. Kikyo, Naraku, and her; they could never be free. Not from each other.

Distantly, Kagura remembered that there were others involved; Sesshoumaru, Inuyasha and his pack, Kouga and his wolves. But somehow, they just didn't seem relevant, not now, not anymore, despite all the effort that Naraku always put into flummoxing their plans. No, the only ones that mattered were here now; Kikyo, Naraku, and her.

Kagura drew one last deep breath, pretending, if only for a second, that she could not smell her own taint on the wind, the reek of Naraku's blood that flowed through her veins. The time for daydreaming was over. Now was the time for action. Even now, she could sense Kikyo nearing the castle, her presence carefully masked by a series of misdirecting zephyrs Kagura sent her way to stir the miasma into a roil of confusion.

Carefully blanking her face into an approximation of Kikyo's expressionless mask, Kagura turned and descended the stairs to where Naraku awaited.

"There is treachery approaching." Onigumo giggled in the noisy chaos of his mind. 'Treachery for you, and treachery for me. Sweet the scent, and cold the taste. We burn, she is hard. Do you feel it? Blood pulsing, boom boom boom, it beats for you." His words were lost in the demon howls of his soul. Prisoners all of them, like a vast democracy gone wrong, the gibbering of a divided soul.

Naraku reclined on a throne in an empty room. He was bored. Bored with Kagura's disobedience, bored with his petty games with Inuyasha's crowd, bored with ruling an empty forest. It was time to marshal his forces and rampage across the countryside, to kill and maim and wreak bloody havoc until he could swim in the blood. Now that was something his gibbering soul could all agree on. For that was the only thing that really mattered, wasn't it? Suffering. His suffering, their suffering. The suffering of the world. Naraku lived on the pain of others, delighting in torments both petty and profound. Filth and slime and blasphemy. That was what it was all about. That, and, of course, Power.

Power was something Naraku understood. He did not, however understand the behavior of his recalcitrant offspring, Kagura. He knew she was powerless against him, she was too much in love with life to die, no matter how much she hated her servitude. It was ingrained in what passed as her soul. It was the way she was built. Kagura could no more defy him, than she could endure the cleansing fire of human holiness.

Yet, here she came now, back straight and stiff, every fold of her kimono so perfectly in place, all rigidity and angles, as if to reject the notion that she could ever be as flexible or biddable as the wind she commanded. Kagura, with a face like ice, and eyes like redly glimmering coals. She didn't much look biddable. She looked like Kikyo again, that stone cold bitch. At least until she spoke, and then she sounded like no one but herself.

"You worthless squid." She began, knowing that Naraku could hardly stand the comparison. "You miserable excuse for a Half-demon. You could have been a god, but here you sit mouldering away in an empty castle like a toad. Where is your web, O great spider? Where is the prey dancing under your strings? Where is your power? Where are your servants? What has happened to your domain?"

Naraku could hardly believe his ears. How dared she? She belonged to him, she was a part of him, her existence rested in his claws, yet Kagura spoke like this? She'd never before graced him with her snarled curses, Nay, she'd led him to believe that her words were a weapon of the wind that she'd reserved for foes not worthy of her more physical arsenal. Words were easy, words were cheap. Words were designed by humans. She rarely let them sully her perfect demon lips.

The double insult was not lost on him, and Naraku stretched out his hand to grasp her heart, to stop the words, to force her to learn her place once and for all. But he could not. Onigumo would not let them. He wanted to hear what his offspring had to say.

"Let her speak," he urged himselves, "only then might we know the most suitable punishments." And in his mind, blood glittered blackly, bones snapped with the sound of dry twigs, the music of screams, the wind whistling through a flute of bone. How pretty the music of pain could be.

Kagura had not paused her tirade for Naraku's inner musings, right now, she would not stop for all the pain in creation. She was on a roll, giving free vent to her hatred and her loathing. "Oh Father," she sneered, "Oh my creator. Have you looked around you recently? While you were playing god, making and breaking your spawn, your rule has crumbled. Your servants have fled, your slaves are dead. Outside these walls, no one knows your name, save for one rag-tag band of misfits and outcasts. Are you proud of what you've achieved, that a lowly fox child hates your name? That one pathetic Buddhist monk will die young? That a dead priestess seeks your demise? Strong work that. But where are your minions? Where is the fear? What happened to your power?

"I can tell you where it went, why you lurk here alone in the dark. You squandered your power on tricks and toys. Did you forget, O great god and master, from what you are created? I long wondered, but I have heard the story too, and now I know. A horde of lesser demons, mindless in their hunger and their malice, and one broken, criminal, insane human. Faugh! The dross of the earth. Oh sure, you've assimilated a few greater demons here and there, taken the most shiny, most impressive-seeming aspects of their being, but you miscalculated in your hubris and your folly.

"That's what comes from being a lesser demon, daddy, didn't you know? Mindless craving for power, not much brains. You thought you were being clever, didn't you, when you shuffled your guts around and cobbled us together, me and Kanna both. Thought you were being clever when you spewed us out like pieces of undigested crap. But did you ever think just what it cost to make such beings as us? We're not as simple as some of your other lesser spawn, you know, the ones that mutt and his pack dispatched with such contemptible ease. Kanna and I, we were full demons, not a shred of humanity in us, something you can never match. And what's more, we're not mere lesser demons like the majority of those that comprise you, oh great squid, we're greater demons. It's a miracle that one as lowly as you could ever produce beings as powerful as we are, an elemental and a spirit demon. Who could have guessed you were capable of it?

"It amazes me to this day that not one of your enemies realized how much we weakened you. Kanna's kind is among the most powerful ever to have existed, though with only such training as you in your ignorance could provide, she never lived to her full potential and remained a stunted shell for her short life. I know how much jyaki it must have taken to birth her from your putrid womb.

"Yet you sit here and pretend that you are still strong, when really, you've wasted your strength. True, Kanna had potential, but she's dead now."

Naraku's fists were clenching barely restrained fury by now, great black curls of miasma streaming from his flesh. Kagura was amazed his temper had held this long. Even she could not understand what held him back. She would not have tolerated such disrespect if she were in his place. Still. She was thankful. She could sense Kikyo in the back of her mind, stealthily approaching the great hall, and the time was almost nigh. A few more seconds was all she needed for the final blow to fall.

"You're weak. O Naraku, O my father, god, and master. You're weak, you're scum, you're the mud beneath my feet, not fit to be my own servant, my own chattel slave. You're weak, and you know it. What's more, I know it. I know that you long to kill me, that you crave the feel of my heart pulping in your fist, the end to the beating of my strong pulse. But you and I both know you can't afford to do it. I am all that makes you strong. All that gives you power as you cower in your castle, protected by your toxic body odor. Afraid of the world outside, afraid that they will see the true you.

"Well, It's too late. I see the true you. And I will not serve anymore. You cannot afford to kill me, and I finally realized it. You can no longer cage the wind. For I will be free!"

She spoke the last words exultantly, triumphantly, certain that the end was nigh. And she proudly turned her back on the brooding, tentacled mass that was her progenitor. She did not quake, she did not tremble as she took the first step away from him, a step that she knew was naught but a mere gesture. She knew what was coming, hell, she could see it through Kikyo's eyes, the sudden eruption of tentacles and miasma, streaming across the room towards her retreating back, as Naraku too, realized what he had to do.

"Foolish child." Naraku crooned, as might a mother to her babe, "to think that you might disrespect me so. Did you forget that you still remain a part of me? Did you forget that what I gave to you, I might reclaim? If it was death you sought, it will not be death you find. Rather, I return you to the womb, and sentence your soul to an eternity of suffering and damnation."

Even as his tentacles enveloped her, Kagura struck out. A pawn she might be, her ultimate destiny already ordained. Still she would not go without a fight. A bloodthirsty snarl erupted from her throat, her eyes flaming scarlet, her fangs bared in a hungry grin she leapt into Naraku's cold embrace. Finally to sink her blades into his flesh, to feel his blood flowing as he had so often bathed in hers. An epiphany of hate, a glory of destruction. The lovely sound of rending flesh, the pulpy tearing of tentacles, the warm caress of blood spray against her face, the stickiness congealing on the cool stone floor.

It was not to last long, for in this at least, Naraku retained the upper hand, being large of form and physically stronger than Kagura, easily able to restrain her, that her wind weapons were useless. Moreover, he had one advantage she did not: He possessed her heart. And while his goal was to absorb his recalcitrant child, Naraku had no qualms about disabling her long enough to achieve his goal. Without further ado, he sank his teeth into the bulging wall of her heart. Feeling the muscle tear beneath his fangs, glorying in the look of shock and pain that spasmed across Kagura's face as her blood stopped flowing in its veins.

Not long now, she only need live long enough that he reabsorb her before her energies dissipated into the void.

Not long now, Kagura prayed as Kikyo advanced, unnoticed as father and spawn fought their private duel.

Not long indeed, for Kagura struggled on, though she felt her limbs growing heavier as her blood stagnated, as Naraku drew more of her into him. It was like some twisted kind of reverse rape. Instead of penetrating her, she was penetrating deeper into him.

_Something's not right._ Naraku could taste it in her. Kagura tasted wrong, her essence hinting faintly at secrets deeply hidden, a source not of himself. Yet still, it drew him on, he craved it like addiction.

Onigumo could have told him. He recognized the taint as only a jilted lover could. He'd obsessed over Kikyo so long and so thoroughly, lost in his own dark insanity, that he could not help but know the taste of her soul. _Clever, clever Kagura,_ He mused in the darkness, _Pretty, sneaking, scheming, beautiful Kagura_ to bring his love his life his hunger his heart the source of him the cause of him the death of him to him.

Onigumo would not have told the rest of himself if his existence depended on it. (Which of course it did). If his demons couldn't recognize the danger, if they were not as smart as they claimed in their collective insanity, then he and they would surely get what was coming for them. Kikyo. His Kikyo. She was coming. For him.

In the raving depths of his mind, Naraku sensed the part of him that was Onigumo; the hunger and the malice, the raw, unbridled sense of triumph.

"What have you done!" He screamed into his mind, searching himself, trying to figure out what had got his human soul so riled up, parsing the conflicting howlings of a hundred hundred demon fragments for that elusive truth. Chased, and found, but too late. Kagura was almost fully absorbed, still struggling, her teeth tearing at his flesh, even as it became her own, even as she began to feel the pain of her claws tearing at Naraku's tentacles, even as his blood became her own, flowing through her veins, pulsing where her own heart could not. And her mind was melting, was slipping away, in rending searing agony, as Naraku's conscious tried to draw her into the murk from whence she'd sprung.

This was so much worse than the melding she and Kikyo had shared, this was like a flensing as the flesh was pulled off her bones, and all that made her unique sucked from her mind. All that held her together was Kikyo's iron will, refusing to let her go. All that kept some spark of the individual alive as the last remnants of the body that had been Kagura's was reabsorbed into Naraku's primordial ooze.

And there she hovered for an eternal instant in the brink between life and death, a wisp of energy like a candle about to be snuffed. No longer conscious, already succumbing to the gibbering chaos within.

And in that Moment, when Naraku realized his folly, and tried to quell that last spark of her soul, that is when Kikyo reached out with her mind, joining fully with the demoness that had sacrificed herself for this moment. The contact exploded outwards the spark becoming a fire, the fire a nova, a cleaning inferno of purity. Holy purity and Demon taint could not coexist like this, not without a strong will, a stronger need. Kagura's need, Kikyo's will, had allowed their unnatural bonding. But Naraku had no such need. Kikyo's will forced itself down his maw, followed the neural pathways that had been Kagura's, willing conduits to the core. Searing fire flashed like acetone through his brain. Naraku felt himself burning apart as Kikyo forced her soul upon him.

"You BITCH!" He screamed his outrage to an empty room, no one to witness it save for a crumbled pile of clay in the corner, bereft of its motive force.

And even as Naraku screamed his defeat, Onigumo screamed his elation, his human heart free at last to glory in the consuming fire once more, the sense of being surrounded by the woman he craved, no longer icy cold, no longer distant, but so close so close inside his mind, and so hot he was dying again by fire, and he would have her forever.

The darkness was receding, and Onigumo reveled in the searing light, as Kikyo prayed a silent thanks for victory, and let her soul dissolve into the jyaki that surrounded her.

Victory tastes like Ice.

Cold and clear and bright and hard.

Purity and jyaki mix like matter and antimatter.

For the teeniest fraction of a nanosecond, there they were Kikyo, Kagura, Onigumo Naraku all part of the same. United. Together, Complete.

And then there was none but a burning corpse on the floor. Empty of soul, empty of life.

No one would discover the bodies for weeks, although Kagome had felt Kikyo's destruction at the instant it happened, sharp as a knife through her skull. Miroku too, felt Naraku's passing as a burning tingle in his hand spreading up his arm towards his heart. He'd thought it was the end of him, that his hand vacuum was swallowing him up.

Hard to believe then, that it was the end. The end of the nemesis, the archenemy.

Not the end of the quest. It would be another two years before Kagome and her incompetent escort pieced together the last of the Shikon jewel. Two more years of tromping through Japan, battling demons, and camping out. Two more years, before they all went their separate ways, their time together at an end.

They never knew what had happened. How the battle had been fought. How the battle had been won.

They built a monument to Kikyo. A flimsy wooden thing that some villagers pulled down and used for firewood one cold winter. They mourned her redeath as well as they could, and that was something.

No one built a monument to Kagura, No one mourned her dearth.

And isn't that always the way? The true heroes, unsung, unknown, unremembered.

But she wouldn't have cared. She who'd been a wind demon. She'd have been happy to know that in death she was forgotten, her name blown away on the wind. Free in the wind.

Was the world a better place, free from Naraku's ambition? Ask those who live in it still. Is it a freer place without his darkness? Ask those who stumble through life in their own miasmas of hate or lust ambition. Naraku is dead, Kikyo is dead. Somehow it all balanced out in the end.

Bards would sing of it as a love story. Poets would declaim the tragedy. Dramatists recount the epic battles.

Bards and Poets and Dramatists are fools.

It was what it was, a story of life, a story of death.

And now it is over.

Think of it what you will.

The End

--- Yes, the gratuitously large number of runon sentences is deliberate.

Questions, comments, flames? You think you want answers? Email: Curdled(dot)milk(at)gmail(dot)com . ------


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